Tag Archives: daily discussion

I think this has just brought up a lot of complaints I have about the college process in general. I know a lot of punditry shows I watch/listen to have been saying the same thing.

My main complaint is you have these rich parents who put down anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million in some cases. Some put less and some put more but those are some of the bigger figures I’ve heard in the news reports.

Here’s my question. You’re a rich person. Your dopey kid didn’t take advantage of the opportunities you provided in high school to become impressive young adults. Why not just use 500,000 to set them up in a business, or start a trust fund so they can just go out and live life and have fun and get some money doled out occasionally and are taken care of. Maybe they’ll eventually grow up and buckle down.

Hell, I never went to an impressive college but sometimes I wish my parents had taken what they spent on college for me and just, I don’t know, given it to me and I could have put down a down payment on a small condo or maybe a Subway sandwich shop franchise or something.

Seriously here’s my 1990s college experience:

CRANBERRIES’ KISS ME PLAYS IN THE BACKGROUND:

1990s ERA YOUNG WOMEN: You are rejected.

1990s ERA PROFESSORS: I’d teach you but really you could just teach yourself? It’s all in your mind already, at least that makes sense to me because my brain’s been baked since Woodstock, man!

But I get it. If you can buy your kid into an elite school then that gives the kid an air of sophistication and/or contacts that can help them in life.

Still, I don’t know. If you’re dropping a million to get your kid into college…holy shit, just drop that million on a few McDonald’s franchises or some investment real estate, hire someone to manage it, tell your dumb kid to go pick out the window treatments so they can feel like they’re in charge of it or whatever.

Or just do it the way old money has always done it. Buy the college a fountain or a fancy building.

3.5 readers, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our 45th POTUS has a rather high opinion of himself. Love him or hate him, that self-confidence has helped him win.

Perhaps it is easy for him to be that uber confident. He was born into great wealth and used it to make more…something most of us will never be able to do.

Then again, if he’d been born poor and only became say, a lowly insurance salesman, something tells me he’d be able to sell tons of insurance policies and make bank for himself.

So I don’t know. People tell me I should try to be confident but I feel like I don’t have much to back it up.

Do you think, for example, if a man who, to riff on Chris Farley, lived in a van down by the river, were to walk into a bar and speak confidently and highly of himself…do you think he’d be able to convince a hot babe to join him in his van down by the river?

Or, would he need something to back his confidence up? Perhaps if he had a mansion he could invite the hot babe to, then he’d have no problem.

Perhaps the greatest part of confidence is knowing that if the opportunity you’re chasing doesn’t work out, another will be around in 5 minutes.

Thus, if you haven’t gotten it on in years, you’re going to seem desperate to that hot babe at the bar. But if you get it regular, then you’ll have like a “Hey baby, take it or leave it” attitude that ironically, may very well intrigue said hot babe.

Personally, I think confidence isn’t a bluff but rather is a state of being obtained by being able to back up what you say and do. I don’t think Trump would say half the things he does if he didn’t know that he had mad cash to hire lawyers to protect him from lawsuits and if his business is adversely affected then he still has plenty of dough. Meanwhile, if you’re the manager of a shoe store like Al Bundy, you’re probably going to keep quiet as you need the last 5 bucks in your wallet for a pizza.

I had the weirdest dream last night. It was weird both in content and also how the brain can make up these weird stories. I don’t understand how the brain is basically able to write, cast and produce a movie in your head that it plays inside your brain while you are sleeping.

So here’s the dream. There was a woman in my neighborhood, she was never given a name, but my brain cast Australian rapper Iggy Azalea to play her in my mind. Keep in mind this wasn’t Iggy playing herself as a cameo or anything. It was just a nameless woman.

There is a party at my house. Why? I don’t know. In reality, I’ve never had enough people who like me enough to all congregate at my house at one time for the purpose of enjoying my company. Hell, I don’t even want to enjoy my company.

By the way, none of the people at the party I recognized. My brain just filled the background with randos.

At the party, the woman played by Iggy cries. She explains she is under a lot of pressure because her husband has gone missing and the media is doing sensational stories that imply that she whacked him. The TV is on and talking about how she probably did him in. Weirdly, the brain fills in gaps…like I can’t remember what the TV said or who on the TV said it, just a general sense that the woman was being accused on TV.

I go to the kitchen and the woman follows me. She asks if she can see my bed. Sigh. Even in my dreams I have zero confidence and so I assume that a woman asking to see my bed has an ulterior motive.

I tell her no but the woman starts crying and gets upset. She tells me she really wants to see my bed. I keep saying no.

At this point, I’m not sure if my brain is a hack writer, but either everyone at the party has left or they just disappear. The woman is getting upset. She really wants to see my bed.

Perplexed, I go to my bed. She does not come with me. What could she have wanted to see?

I look around the surface of the bed. Nothing.

I look around the room. Nothing.

I lift up the bed. Her husband’s dead body is wrapped up in a sheet under my bed!

I confront the woman and ask her if she killed her husband and put his body under my bed. She says no. I don’t believe her. I am scared of her now. I tell her I’m calling 911 and she asks me not to. I grab a frying pan and somehow I am able to keep her at bay with it. I just hold the frying pan at arm’s length and this keeps her from coming near me.

I tell the 911 operator the whole story, how my neighbor is a woman accused on TV of killing her husband and that she kept asking to see my bed and so I went to the bed and found her dead husband underneath. As I do so, the woman keeps asking me to stop talking to 911 because she didn’t do it.

The police come and take the body away. For the rest of the dream, I start defending myself on a TV news show, I never see the host, just myself on the screen, and apparently my brain has made an assumption that people are accusing me of helping the wife hide the body.

The host asks me didn’t I ever smell the body and I say no I never did. This is probably again my brain being a hack writer.

The host asks why do I think people are accusing me of being in on it and I tell the host well, I’m a really ugly looking person and so people automatically assume that ugly people are bad, but I wasn’t in on the husband murder or the cover up and honestly, if I was, why would I have called the police to tell them about the body under my bed?

Sigh. Even in my dream I’m aware how ugly I am and the biases people have against me as an ugly person.

At that point I wake up and that’s the end of the dream. My brain did leave some plot holes, but still, it’s crazy how in a dream, the mind can come up with an elaborate story. What was the point of all that? Why did my brain make that story happen? What series of brain cells start firing to make this little inner brain movie happen?

Also, why couldn’t it have been a happier dream? Why couldn’t the woman played by Iggy Azalea have just come over to bang me and live happily ever after? Why did there have to be a dead husband? Why did I have to be falsely accused?

Clearly, my brain knows my life is shit. Ergo, if my brain puts a hot chick at my party, she can only be there as part of an elaborate rouse to frame me for murder and not just because like she wants my junk. My unconscious brain is literally able to do the calculations in my sleep necessary to conclude that the woman would never be there just to like me and shit.

Oh brain. What little esteem you hold me in.

Feel free to discuss what you think my brain was trying to tell me in the comments.

If you didn’t click the link, I’ll try to summarize. There’s an Atlanta surgeon and she had a YouTube channel where she sings, dances, and raps while cutting into patients, even having assistants join in. You can see clips in the CNN story. The vids have been taken down from her YouTube channel but you can still find some about the Internet. I can’t be sure, but, to me anyway, it looks like she moved the scalpel to the beat in one video. Again, I’m no expert so I don’t want to say that for sure. I could be wrong but…well, I hope I’m wrong. Scalpels should be moved, you know, according to medical rules and not to a funky beat.

If she’d done this on her own time…maybe out of the hospital, made a fun video where she raps and dances over a fake patient, it would be ok. A fun self promo.

But…I mean, even if the patients can’t be identified…you just see stomachs and so on…if you go to a doctor to get surgery, you didn’t sign up to have your body parts shown online and how she didn’t realize the world is small and that wouldn’t eventually get back to someone who would complain.

I don’t know. Social media has brought out our worst instincts. Sometimes I’m a champion for social media. It gives a voice to people who were previously voiceless.

But then I just wonder if the old way was better. Become famous by, you know, actually doing something. Otherwise, it’s just acting a fool for the camera.

I worry about that with this blog. I have been thinking about shutting it all down lately. I have beaten myself up for years for not becoming super rich and famous and successful, as if it were somehow easy and I didn’t pull that off a tree as if fame is low hanging fruit easily within reach. But maybe I just did my best within the limits I have and the cards I was dealt and maybe my free time would be better spent walking in the park, or working on my health, taking a bike ride, getting a new hobby…

I have no idea. I like to think my writing is somehow constructive…but I feel like a jackass, waving my hands along the information superhighway. “Look at me! Notice me! Pay attention to me!”

I mean, it’s not as bad as this woman but perhaps this blog is just a form of doing jumping jacks to get noticed.

Stuff like this just leaves me depressed. This woman is a doctor. Probably paid well. Obtained knowledge and a skill few can handle. Probably could have written and/or made serious content about doctoring and just….no. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t go in for surgery and end up with your naked stomach on YouTube.

We need to invent time travel and get young Mark Zuckerberg laid so he never kicks off this social media mess. Everyone was better off where they said, “Fuck it, I didn’t find fame by 25, so time to get serious about regular life.”

How much of this is people who legitimately can’t get anyone to touch them with a ten foot pole and how much of it is people who look like cave trolls who believe they are too good to date other people who look like cave trolls and believe there is something special about them that means they should date people who look like movie stars and there is a great unfairness in the world that the people who look like movie stars don’t recognize that?

Sigh. Honestly, we’re only like 1-2 years away from protestors coming into a Chinese restaurant and smacking the General Tso’s chicken carton out of my hand, aren’t we? I can see it. That will totally happen.

Bill Cosby, “The Coz” is headed for the slammer, the hoosegow, the stoney lonesome.

It’s sad. For you younger 3.5 readers, you may not realize this guy was once America’s Dad and that was a big achievement because, you know, he was black and that was a new thing at the time. There weren’t a lot of good TV roles for African Americans at the time and then suddenly you’ve got this show full of positive role models for anyone, black or white, to look up to.

The Cosby Show was riotously funny for its time, managing to transcend racial lines to discuss issues about family, growing up, teaching kids to take responsibility for their lives, education, doing the right thing etc yet somehow it managed to do so with humor and without being overly preachy.

My favorite episode is the one where young son Theo claims to have it all figured out, he’s going to drop out of school, not go to college, fend for himself and Cosby shows him via Monopoly money just how much the world is going to take from him if he doesn’t push himself to reach his full earning potential. “Are you going to have a girlfriend?” “Yep,” Theo replies and then wham, Bill takes the money and leaves the kid with nothing.

Plus, he sold Kodak film (product that eventually became irrelevant), New Coke (people demanded a return of the old coke) and pudding pops (which were freaking delicious and does anyone know if they still make them? I want one right now that I am thinking about them.)

Sigh. It is sad that apparently while he was doing so much good he was also apparently drugging ladies and taking advantage of them…I guess people think that fame will help them get away with so many bad things but it finally caught up with him.

Dave Chapelle put it best. Imagine something you really love, like ice cream, then imagine hearing that thing is a rapist. Damn, ice cream is a rapist. Now I can’t enjoy ice cream anymore.

I know. It’s not good to idolize the past. Sometimes it’s hard to watch an old TV show like “Leave it to Beaver” and think the 1950s were awesome only to realize that yeah, they were only awesome for Ward and people like Ward and no one else.

So, all that’s a given. We’re all glad for improvements in equality, civil rights, etc.

Here’s two things I wish had remained:

#1 – Clothing – People, and I don’t care how rich or poor they were, where they were from, their background, ethnicity, race, profession, religion or what have you, dressed up whenever they did anything. A trip to the grocery store required a suit. People always wanted to look their best.

Some of that is because there weren’t many options to dress down. T-shirts with funny sayings on them hadn’t been invented yet.

I’m willing to hear some criticism of this. Dressing up probably wasn’t fun for women if it involved long gowns with all kinds of parts and straps and iron bars and shit. And maybe a suit for a trip to the store is a bit much.

Surely, there could be some modern compromise that captures the idea that to be out of your house means to look your best and it’s easier to be less formal. Tell you what, how about suits are only necessary for jobs that require them but maybe a nice polo shirt over that “I’m with Stupid” t-shirt, OK?

Look, I’m not one to talk. I look like I wake up everyday, dive into the hamper and just walk out wearing whatever stuck to me.

Another thing that sucks is a lack of headwear. Fedoras were awesome and should still be wearable today as a real look and not as a proclamation of hipsterism. You know what looks stupid? Wearing a baseball cap for any other reason than you are a baseball player or some other kind of athlete. Or maybe you want to have a head covering while you are active, keep the wind out of your hair or the sun off your head without something bulky. I get that.

However, the fedora was like a fancy suit for a man’s head. And ladies had some fancy hats – dresses for their heads. I really think we should bring back the hats.

Know why? Past people understood a) not everyone has good hair and b) not every person with good hair has a good hair day. You got the locks? Let them flow on a Friday night. You don’t? Don’t worry. Pop on a fancy hat.

I said fancy hat. Not your “I Honk for Titties” trucker cap, you pervert.

The second thing I wish had remained from the past are the hobbies. TV wasn’t as prevalent, so people…read! They actually read. And they played games…and talked. They played music. People would gather around a piano and sing while someone played. People knew how to play instruments and shit because they relaxed by learning how to play them because TV wasn’t the giant time suck it is today.

You can still do all these things today but you need to be more disciplined and sigh…shut that tv off.

I know I said two but I thought of a third thing – food. People did eat a lot of bacon and drank a lot of whole milk and they smoke and drank a lot and didn’t understand all the health ramifications of bad food.

Today, info about bad food is prevalent….but it’s much more available so we stuff it in our cakeholes and hope for the best. Processed foods, fast food…shit in olden times, June would just bake Ward a cook turkey.

Do we need a debate over who cooks the turkey? No. I don’t care if June cooks it, or Ward, or hell tell Wally and the Beaver to get off their dumb asses and cook it. I’m just saying, people used to cook their own food more and I think they were healthier for it.

It’s getting harder and harder to keep bringing the 7 eyes of 3.5 readers to this wonderful site. Also, I’m no spring chicken.

I’m unsure of the future. Perhaps I will turn over the keys of BQB HQ to my arch-nemesis, the International War Criminal/Incredibly Boring Snow Monster, “The Yeti.”

Perhaps I will dump a bottle of hot sauce on my head, then go swimming in a shark tank.

Maybe I will ask Fergie to serenade me. No, scratch that. Fergie is a national treasure. Screw you all for making fun of that goddess. She brought us so much joy with her humps, surely we can spot her one error in judgment.

I think I’ll just lie down in my backyard. Watch the butterflies flap their wings and let caterpillars crawl all over me until the moss and grass just grow over me and consume me.

Perhaps none of that is necessary to not blog anymore. Or maybe I’ll sub-contract the blog out to some hired help. Maybe I’ll just watch movies and eat pizza and hire a team of sentient iguana typists to write this blog for me and I’ll pay them in flies.